In the last decade, there have been tremendous advances in medical devices which have greatly improved the ability to diagnose and treat patients. Ultrasounds, sonograms and echocardiograms are just a few modern tools developed to accurately diagnose patients with coronary problems, kidney stones, tumors, and other diseases without conducting risky and expensive exploratory surgeries. These tools are especially useful because they have the capability of being more accurate than exploratory surgeries and do not pose an additional risk to patients.
Given the benefits of ultrasounds, sonograms and echocardiograms these tools are in widespread use in many hospitals, clinics, testing facilities, and individual doctors' offices. Many doctors primarily base their diagnosis on the results from ultrasounds, sonograms and echocardiograms. While these tools allow doctors to make their diagnosis without costly, risky, and time consuming exploratory surgeries, an error in administering an ultrasound, sonogram and echocardiogram can lead to a wrong diagnosis. A wrong diagnosis can be catastrophic for the patient. By receiving an incorrect diagnosis, the patient can potentially fail to receive needed medical treatment and/or be unnecessarily treated. Whether needed medical treatment is withheld or unnecessary medical treatment is given due to an erroneous test result from an ultrasound, sonogram and echocardiogram, the patient unnecessarily suffers.
The doctor is generally not at the test when the study is performed on the patient. The tests are typically performed and later reviewed by the doctor after the patient has left the technician's office. The test is recorded in a video or movie format and then later played by the doctor to make their diagnosis.
A video picture or frame is made up of a number of horizontal lines included within the video display. To display a video picture or frame the video system begins at the top of the screen and displays the information within the composite video signal one horizontal line at a time. The information for each horizontal line is contained within a horizontal period of the composite video signal. After each horizontal period, the video system moves to the next line and displays the information within the next horizontal period of the composite video system. This continues until the video system reaches the bottom line on the video display. After displaying the video information on the bottom line of the video display, the video system must reset itself to the top of the display in order to begin displaying the next frame. In order to allow the system to reset itself to the top of the video display a vertical blanking period is included within the composite video signal, after the video information for each frame. This vertical blanking period allows the video system to reset to the top of the video display and begin displaying the information for the horizontal lines of the next frame. Therefore, a number of horizontal periods, enough to comprise a frame or screen, are strung together, within the composite video signal. Between each frame, the composite video signal includes a vertical blanking period which allows the video system to perform a vertical reset and prepare to display the next frame by moving back up to the top of the video display.
A schematic block diagram of a typical configuration including a display device 10 and an external image source 12 coupled together through a network 14 is illustrated in FIG. 1. The network 14 can be an intranet connection, Internet connection or a direct connection between the display device 10 and the external image source 12. A user can view a movie or stream of video frames at the display device 10 which is transmitted from the source device 12. Currently, such a video stream can be transmitted from the source device 12 to the display device 10 in a number of ways. In order to view a movie transmitted from the source device 12, at the display device 10, in typical systems, the entire video stream of frames within the movie is transmitted and stored at the display device 10 and then viewed by the user. This method has the disadvantage that it can be very time consuming, because it requires that the entire movie is sent to the display device 10, before viewing of the movie can begin at the display device 10. Depending on the size of the movie and the speed of the connection between the display device 10 and the source device 12, this can be a significant delay from the time the video stream is transmitted until the user can start watching the movie at the display device 10.
In another prior system, frames of the movie are sent interactively as the movie was recorded. This has the disadvantage of requiring the movie to be transmitted in the format in which it was recorded. This format may not be suitable for efficient transmission. This system also has the disadvantage that the movie is not stored at the display device 10 and must be re-transmitted for each viewing.
In still another prior system, frames of the movie are interactively transcoded to a storage-efficient encoding format either before transmission or as the frames are being transmitted. This system has the disadvantage of not allowing the viewer to see frames of the movie as originally recorded. Depending on the encoding format used, a user of such a system may notice a significant decrease in image quality. This system also has the disadvantage that the movie is not stored at the display device and must be re-transmitted for each viewing.